CALL FOR A MORATORIUM ON CLUSTER BOMB USE, MANUFACTURE, SALE AND
TRANSFER

The Call for a Moratorium

Over the past 35 years cluster bombs have created a persistent and predictable
pattern of indiscriminate injury and death both during and after armed conflicts
around the world. People in the countries of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon,
Afghanistan, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq and Kuwait can readily testify to the
terror of unexploded cluster bombs in their fields, gardens, and villages. The
recent use of cluster bombs during wars in Serbia/Kosovo and in Chechnya has
once again highlighted this tragedy, as casualties continue to mount from
cluster bomb use in these areas. Clearly the humanitarian concerns arising from
the use of these weapons call for immediate action by the world community. We
the undersigned call on all states and non-state actors to agree to:

Cluster bombs are small explosive submunitions or bomblets that are delivered to
their targets in larger canisters or shells. They can be delivered by
air-launched systems (as bombs from aircraft), ground-based artillery systems
(such as Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions in artillery shells or
submunitions contained in Multiple Launch Rocket Systems), or missile based
systems (such as cruise missiles fired from the air, ground, or sea.

Cluster bombs have anti-personnel fragmentation features which can send hundreds
of shards of steel at ballistic speeds over a wide area, or shaped charges which
can penetrate heavy armor. Many of the cluster bomb canisters carry hundreds of
bomblets. A drop of several canisters can easily create kill zones of a square
kilometer or greater in size.

A working definition of cluster weapons is as follows: Cluster warheads or other
devices with many bomblets which act through the ejection of a great number of
small-calibred fragments or pellets, including combined effects and dual purpose
munitions.

The Problem with Cluster Bombs: They Kill Indiscriminately Today and
Tomorrow

Cluster bombs kill indiscriminately in two ways. First, their wide-area nature
and often poor targeting mechanisms nearly guarantee that unintended victims
will die or be injured when the weapons function as designed. Secondly,
submunitions continue to kill long after the battle is over because of their
failure to explode on contact or as designed. Dud rates are often in the 10-15%
range, but may range as high as 30%. While the term dud suggests deactivation,
in reality many of the duds are armed but failed to function on initial impact.
These submunitions may explode at the slightest touch, and are highly lethal,
frequently killing more than one person because of their wide fragmentation
patterns. Like landmines, cluster munitions must be located and destroyed one by
one, a costly and time consuming process.

In 1976, thirteen nations called for a ban on anti-personnel cluster weapons.
Those countries were Algeria, Austria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico,
Norway, Sudan, Switzerland, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. They focused on the
immediate effects of cluster weapons, stating in a working paper that:

These anti-personnel fragmentation weapons tend to have both indiscriminate
effects and to cause unnecessary suffering. At detonation a vast number of small
fragments or pellets are dispersed evenly covering a large area with a high
degree of probability of hitting any person in the area. The effect of such a
detonation on unprotected persons - military or civilian - in the comparatively
large target area is almost certain to be severe with multiple injuries caused
by many tiny fragments. Multiple injuries considerably raise the level of pain
and suffering. They often call for prolonged and difficult medical treatment and
the cumulative effect of the many injuries increases the mortality risk. . . .
When the normal weapon effect is so extensive as to cover areas of several
square kilometers in an attack by a single aircraft, these weapons are hardly
capable of use anywhere without hitting civilians incidentally.

The past two decades of experience not only reinforce these conclusions but
demonstrate the additional negative side effect of cluster weapons, that being
the creation of de facto unmarked minefields.

As with land mines, children often fall victim to submunitions. Attracted by a
combination of size, shape, and/or color, children often pick up submunitions
and are killed or injured. A recent study sponsored by the International
Committee of the Red Cross in Kosovo found that children were five times more
likely to be killed or injured by submunitions than by land mines.

Summary

Cluster bombs are not specifically banned or restricted under current
international law, even though their indiscriminate effects have been
well-documented over the past 35 years. It is time for the international
community to implement an immediate moratorium on cluster bomb use, manufacture,
sale, and transfer, and actively consider long-term solutions in the context of
appropriate international fora.

A response to this Call for a Moratorium, by December 4, 2000 would be welcome,
in order to present endorsements for the moratorium to government delegations at
the December 2000 preparatory review conference for the Certain Conventional
Weapons (CCW) Treaty.